The Ausiello Files Exclusive TV News and Scoop

Stunt casting and emotional honesty usually tend to occupy mutually exclusive realms. But that wasn’t the case with “Flesh and Bone,” the 150th episode of NCIS, which had Robert Wagner making a first-time (and, everyone should hope, not last-time) appearance as Anthony DiNozzo Sr., father to Michael Weatherly’s “Junior.” When Wagner gets his big entrance in the crew’s D.C. offices, yes, it did feel like kind of a Love Boat senior-of-the-week moment—all rise for the honorable Jonathan Hart!—but by the end of the hour, it was clear the Wag had helped make this by far the finest episode of season 7, and maybe one of the best ever.

Initially it looked like Wagner might have been employed just for the Weatherly-esque twinkle in his eye… which, honestly, might’ve been enough. There’s enough of a resemblance even if you don’t have it in the back of your mind that Weatherly played Wagner in a 2004 TV movie about Natalie Wood, and it was great fun to have the 79-year-old actor doing a slight impression of his 41-year-old “son,” making it clear that the apple didn’t fall far from the roguish tree. But what worked so nicely even in the early parts of the episode was that Wagner was doing Weatherly, but Weatherly wasn’t doing Weatherly. Or, to put it another way, we got to see how a son who adopted all his dad’s charms might drop that charm when his estranged father is actually in the room.

And the shadings got deeper, for both the W’s. Wagner dropped his charm when Mark Harmon’s Gibbs took him aside into a conference room and upbraided “Senior” for not being much of a father to “the best young agent I’ve ever worked with,” at which point we got to see Papa DiNozzo’s steely side. And then, in a brilliantly played climactic scene in a hotel lobby, where it’s been revealed that Daddy is broke and won’t be able to pay his bill, Wagner gives great vulnerability as an eternal smoothie who knows he’s fallen off his game. The whole complicated father-son relationship here could stand as a terrific metaphor for any middle-aged kids who think of themselves as victims of their controlling parents and don’t know quite how to react when they see an aging mom or dad faltering.

Does this sound like heavy emotional baggage for an NCIS? It is, but writers George Schenk and Frank Cordeo and director Arvin Brown pulled it off in such quick, deft strokes, it didn’t feel any less breezy than the show at its most ephemeral. For fans who wait through some pretty goofy stuff for this kind of character development, it was a treat just to get those few seconds of silence as DiNozzo, who’s just been told “I love you” twice by his usually withholding dad, just stands there puzzled in the hotel lobby, not saying anything in return, even though we soon learn he’s already said “I love you” in advance by surreptitiously paying papa’s bill.

One criticism you could make of NCIS is that it almost always has great character scenes within an episode but rarely has them at the finish, since there’s usually some sort of whodunit business being wrapped up or future setup being established at the close. But “Flesh and Bone” had not just one great ending but two. That was partly due to the mystery of who did the killing being wrapped up about halfway through the hour and the question of why well before 9/8c this time. That left time not just for the hotel lobby scene, but also a denouement in which Tony and Gibbs clink bottles in the senior agent’s living room. At this point we find out how much love has gone unrevealed to certain parties: Tony doesn’t know that Gibbs gave his dad a pep talk or talked him up so highly; Dad doesn’t know that it wasn’t the Arab prince but Tony that chipped in untold thousands of bucks to keep him temporarily solvent and embarrassment free. Only surrogate dad Gibbs knows all, as usual.

And in these double-endings, NCIS gets to have it both ways, emotionally: First, in the hotel, by having one father break down and confess paternal love, and then, in the living room, taking the more macho approach, where manly men share steaks while agreeing that “Sometimes it’s better to keep what you know to yourself.”

The big three here were Wagner, Weatherly, and Harmon, but kudos also for how everyone else was allowed to make at least a small impression here, whether it was Abby (Pauley Perrette)—as usual, a sort of surrogate for the most enthusiastic members of the fan base—overenthusiastically sneaking into the interrogation room to get a gander at Tony Sr., or the casual aside by Ducky (David McCallum) which establishes Wagner’s credibility by agreeing that, yes, the ribeye in the hotel rooftop restaurant is to die for. So, for faithful fans, was this episode.

What did you think of "Flesh and Bone"?

Leroy Jethro Gibbs is the calm in the eye of NCIS’ hurricane—a strong, silent type in the midst of a whole cast of strong, blabby types. (In the season premiere, Tony DiNozzo even described Gibbs as “a functional mute” to a curious terrorist.) Fortunately for our purposes, Mark Harmon, while also strong, is just a little less silent. In this exclusive Q&A, he talks about where the characters on the top show on television have been—and, surprisingly, about how he doesn’t want to know where they’re going. For more with Mark—including photos of his food fight with costar Cote de Pablo—check out the cover story of TV Guide Magazine, on newsstands Oct. 29!

Are you tired yet of talking about being No. 1?
I don’t know that you get tired about that. This group so deserves it in a business where deserve doesn’t matter. It’s truly odd that we would be in year 7 doing the best numbers we’ve ever done. That’s unusual. But I think we’re doing it better than we’ve ever done it before, too.

Now we’re hearing about teenagers being into the show, which certainly wasn’t the perception before, and still more people stumbling across reruns on the USA Network and realizing that it’s a funny show and not a “military drama,” a stigma that has only gradually been shed.
It takes time. I think all of us here signed on to play specific characters. I’ve never been part of an ensemble like this where everybody’s just so happy playing the role they’re playing. You can’t write Abby lines for Gibbs, and you can’t write Gibbs lines for DiNozzo, and you can’t write DiNozzo lines for McGee, and you can’t write Ziva lines for anybody. Everybody is personally driven by the characters we all play here. That it’s taken time doesn’t surprise me. We’re in a business here where sometimes you don’t get time. This show jumped off somewhere in the 30s [in the Nielsen ratings], and that’s where we were for a while. And slowly, with the build of summer reruns, we started getting some more viewers. In all that mix, the show has changed and adapted over the years as well. And with USA and Ion and all that, it’s hard to get away from it right now. Plus, this is a show that’s always rerun well. You can watch this show a number of times and still think you haven’t seen it, and maybe that’s a good thing.

When NCIS began, you were known for playing roles with a sunnier presence. I have a picture of you in my mind on the poster for the movie Summer School, warm and smiling…
[laughing] And then you meet Gibbs.

He’s pretty stoic. Did the character feel similar at all to other characters you’d played on other series?
No, it actually doesn’t. And it’s always changed for me here, too. I think he’s different from what he started as being. Breaking Gibbs down initially, his life and times as a Marine, and then separating that in some ways from his personal life…. These are all things that, at one point, were just talked about, as part of the bible that writers have and draw from. And then over seven years, you get more definition and more ability to hang onto certain tings. I kid about it, but for a number of years here, I was playing that Gibbs was married three times, and then all of a sudden I found out that he’d been married four. I mean, that was okay, so you adjust. But I think one of the nice things they do here is challenge the characters. Because a lot of times, individually and as a group, we’ll pick up a script and realize that we have read something that we didn’t know. It’s highly probable that I don’t know all the secrets of this character, and that makes him fun to play. Maybe he’s got some qualities of me and maybe he doesn’t, I’m not sure. But I’m very comfortable with it, and not bored, either.

It’s interesting how he fits into the ensemble, since most of the other characters are highly verbal and Gibbs stands in stark contrast to that. You sometimes get the feeling Gibbs is a guy who almost wishes he could join in the mirth, or that he has a slight air of mischief about him that, as the leader, he can never really afford to exercise too much.
That’s always in the wings here. You’ve seen enough of our rehearsals here to know that some of ‘em are just downright silly. And then there’s some molding that goes on somehow off the page to develop the characters. We all understand our jobs here. And a lot of times Gibbs’ job is to play the point, to drive the scene. Our scene can get distracted in many different directions with many different characters doing what we do. But it’s fun to watch this group take a scene and a morning read, just from standing up and blocking the scene, to what actually gets put down on camera. And directors who work here and actors who work here generally find that process completely enjoyable. It’s been earned here. It wasn’t like that from the start.

Most of the characters wear their hearts on their sleeves. You get to be the one everybody wonders what he’s thinking. That must be fun to play, too.
It is. There’s a whole lot you don’t know about him. He obviously has really poor taste in women. And if in any kind of linear fashion you’re talking about relationships, he’s really had one great love in his life, and that ended abruptly. And I don’t know if he’ll ever get over that. If we do this show for a number of more years, we’ll see. But that’s part of what the writers have also done over the years: They’ve pushed more into those personal story lines with everybody. It’s honest storytelling, and you have to give more. We can’t be playing the same characters that we were playing in year 1, year 2. We have to change, and either your audience changes with you and accepts that and looks forward to that, or they turn you off. We’ve been fortunate here.

Is there any simple way to explain how Gibbs has evolved?
I just think he’s matured. This is still about the job for him. But he’s not burning his boats anymore. He’s sailing ‘em. He’s putting ‘em on the water. As far as I know, this is the first one that’s actually been out on the water and used. That’s progress. [laughs] We’re gonna actually see this year that Gibbs has a living room. We’ve never seen that before. He actually has some place other than his basement. These are thought up well in advance. It’s not like the writers are playing games with you. They’re just letting this out slowly. There’s nothing in this show that is not attached. Everything has a thread somewhere. We’re very fortunate to have kept this writing team together as long as we have. It’s important. And I think it’s odd, too. A number of these writers have written 20, 30 episodes, and in network television, that doesn’t happen much. People don’t stay together that long. As opposed to the first four years here, where this was a tough job for a writer. A lot of writers left here. Some couldn’t do the show, and certainly some that could left. That’s changed. And it’s become a place—just like with the actors, just like with the crew—that people look forward to coming to. And we’re all together [physically] this year. This is the first year the writers have been up here [at the Valencia soundstages]. They used to work out of Sunset Gower, so that’s been a good change too. The writers come here every week, they walk down the hall, they open the door, they say “Hey, what about this?” If they’ve got a question, they come on the set and ask you. It’s the team thing, which is really what the heart of this show is.

In theory this is a procedural show first and a show about personal lives second…
What do you think about that? Do you believe that?

It’s funny, because fans obsess over the smallest personal details. When you look at the percentage of show devoted to those details, it’s a very small percentage. But it seems like the smaller that part is, the more fascinating it is to people.
Sure, sure. But it starts with character. Because people care about the characters. I mean, try walking through an airport right now. They’re invested. They want to know. People this summer wanted to know, what happened to Ziva? That was huge. And we had earned that here. In some ways you’ve got to credit the people who are here doing it, and the writers who are creating it, and Cote for acting it, and all of us for supporting that. But these guys have a plan. They have a long arc of ideas. I don’t know what they are. You start hearing whispers of what’s two shows away at the most. But I don’t know where they’re heading this year, where they plan to end it or what they plan to do with it. Maybe in February or March we might start hearing little pieces of that. If there’s a different way to run it, where [actors] are more involved and active in what they say they want to do and that’s showing up on the page, I don’t think this is a show like that. I think the writers have a lot of trust from the actors, and I think they create it, and it’s our job to put it on its feet.

So even though you’re an executive producer as well as actor, you’re not tempted to go into the writers’ room and say, “Where’s this season gonna end”?
No, I never have. To me it’s kind of like backloading it. It’s kind of like trying to work in reverse, maybe. I don’t know, I’ve never done that here. I don’t know how they’d respond, anyway. But I really don’t want to know. I just would rather read the next script and say “Okay, this is what I’m doing, and how do we make it the best we can make it?”

The show has focused a lot on Gibbs and Ziva this season. The early episodes were a bit tense—he wanted to embrace her and bring her back into the fold but felt the need to be standoffish.
That was a big drop last spring, about the killing of her brother being a setup and an order, as opposed to what the audience was led to believe originally, which was just saving his life. And I think even double to that is who knew about it. Plenty more people knew about this than Gibbs thought. I think there’s a process, not only for all the characters on the show, but certainly between Ziva and Gibbs. It doesn’t surprise me that he’s not welcoming of her back with open arms. She’s back—physically back—though there’s quite a ways to travel yet. She’s been through a lot, and her loyalty was really being called to the mat here. It doesn’t surprise me at all that what [the writers] were doing with Gibbs is making him the last to the table. He perhaps cares the most. This is someone you either trust with your life or you don’t, and it’s that cut and dried for him. He’s a huge fan of hers, but there was no loyalty question with anybody else on his team. What they do and how they trust each other is the most important part of the job.

The relationship has thawed now, and Gibbs is being presented as sort of a surrogate father figure to Ziva. But can Gibbs ever be a truly fatherly presence, or will he always be reserved?
Will he be someone you can trust, implicitly? Absolutely, without doubt. Will he ever be the warm and fuzzy big fluffy teddy bear in the corner? No, not a chance. I don’t think, unless they change some things. He’s got too much baggage, as we all do. He’s done this job too long and he knows too much about the pitfalls and perils and the reality of it. And at the end of the day, Gibbs is a realist.

Do you and Cote ever sit down and talk about where your on-screen relationship is going?
We definitely talk about the scene. We do that a lot. And it’s very frank. I’ve known her now for five years, so that’s also a nice thing. We’re generally pretty honest with each other, and we’re able to tell each other things that I don’t know even a director could tell you and get away with it. As far as relationship-wise or where the characters are going, I really just look as far as the scene and as far as the script tells us we go next week. That’s survival, for me. It’s too complicated to look further than that.

In the "Good Cop, Bad Cop" episode, there’s a moment in that show in the interrogation room where it’s a climax, and there’s been a huge development in the hearts of both characters. And something is said to Ziva by Gibbs. And we don’t necessarily hear what’s said. But it’s very specific, what was said. And the reaction and the read on Ziva from what is said is specific as well. Now, what I said or what Cote reacted to or how she found what she found for that, she’s not gonna tell you any more than I am—I don’t think. That’s our secret. And yet it’s all about respecting the work and knowing each other well enough to really say, “Okay, I’ll go there with you.” It’s a really comfortable zone to work in. We all like each other. And liking is about trust, and it’s about respect. We have different writers here, different directors here, but the consistent part is the main core of actors who are here every day. And these are all actors who want to be directed. There’s no actor here going “Don’t talk to me.” We’re always open to: What are you thinking, what do you want?

Cote was the last principal squad member to come on board. It’s been a number of years, but is she still kind of the probie?
[laughs] She’s never been a probie. When you talk to her, you’ll see that. There’s nobody like her. How do you define that moment on this show? She came in the back door. There was another gal there [in the running for the role], and Michael Weatherly did a test with her, and the other girl. And Michael went off script, and Cote thought it was just totally unprofessional and just backed him up right in the middle of the take. And that’s what they wanted to see. They wanted to see someone that would back up DiNozzo. She loves the job and can’t wait to get here in the morning. Here we are in year 7 with this really terrific mix. That’s what I would say to people in the summertime, when they’d say “What about Ziva?” [As in, will she leave the show?] I’d say, “No one is stupid. It took too long to get this group together.”

Three of the actors have sung on NCIS soundtrack albums now—first, Cote and Pauley, and then Michael on the second one. Will you be on Vol. 3?
Not unless you wanna have that soundtrack go belly up. No, I don’t think so.

But on YouTube, there are clips of you singing on 240-Robert, way back when.
And I sang on Saturday Night Live when I hosted—me and Phil Hartman. That’s not up there on YouTube, I don’t think, is it? Good. You know what, all those people who want to step out there in front of the mike, let ‘em do it.